The present invention relates to an electrostatic copying apparatus comprising a plurality of interconnected copying machines.
In large business and government organizations it is necessary to provide an electrostatic copying facility which can produce various types of copies at high speed. One approach to the problem is to provide a single high speed copying machine which can achieve all functions such as copying on various sizes of copy paper at various magnification ratios. This approach has two serious drawbacks, one being the extremely high cost of such a copying machine and the second being the fact that only one person can make copies at any given time.
A second approach is to provide several copying machines which are constructed to enable different functions such as copying on different sizes of copy paper. The copying machines are preferably located at different places in an office building for employee convenience. Generally, several single function copying machines may be purchased at a lower total cost than a single all-function copying machine.
Although the second approach overcomes the disadvantages of the first approach, it introduces other problems. For example, a person at one location has no way of knowing which copying machines are in use or broken. Also, more work is required in supplying different sizes of copy paper, toner etc. for the several copying machines. It is also more difficult, where an organization has a number of sections, to determine how many copies are made by each section and of what size for cost allocation purposes.